The Washington Post reports that engineers in a free Iraq
are restoring the habitat of the Marsh Arabs:
The flow is not what it once was -- new dams have weakened the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers that feed the marshes -- but the impact has been profound. As the blanket of water gradually expands, it is quickly nourishing plants, animals and a way of life for Marsh Arabs that Hussein had tried so assiduously to extinguish.
In Zayad, a tiny hamlet about 210 miles southeast of Baghdad that was one of the first places to be flooded, residents have rushed to reclaim their traditions. Kerkush drove to the port city of Basra to buy a wooden boat known as a mashoof. His children assembled fish nets. Other relatives scoped out locations to build a house of reeds.
The marsh has once again assumed its omnipresent role in the village. Women clad in black head-to-toe abayas wade into the water to wash clothes. The mullet found in the murky depths, though small and bony, is grilled for dinner every night. Swamp grasses are cut to feed the cows and sheep that will eventually be traded for water buffalo.
"Everyone is so happy," Kerkush said as he watched his son stand in a mashoof and steer it like a gondolier with a long wooden pole. "We are starting to live like we used to, not the way Saddam wanted us to live."
More from this same article: After detailing the lengthy history of Marsh Arab life comes this wonderful tidbit:
Sitting atop a reed mat on his concrete porch, Kerkush said he dreams of once again building a mudheef -- a long, domed-roof structure made of tightly woven reeds that Marsh Arabs used to receive visitors. Clad in a crisp white tunic and a black-and-white head scarf, he would sit inside and entertain other sheiks with black coffee and tales of days past.
"The mudheef was center of our social life," he said. "We didn't need television."
Because of new roads and with his shop in a nearby trading town, outside influences have permeated the marshes faster than the water. He has heard of the Internet and would like to "bring it" to the village.
"I'd like a mudheef and the Internet," he said with an optimistic gleam. "I don't want to live entirely in the past."
****
The rest of the marsh is similarly nascent. The reeds are not yet sufficient to rebuild the huts destroyed by Hussein's army. The birds that have returned are not the right species to trap.
But as the scion of a clan that has lived here for perhaps 5,000 years, Kerkush said he is willing to be patient while engineers and politicians figure out how to pump more water into the marshes.
"Saddam did everything he could to kill us," he said. "You cannot recover from that right away."
You really ought to read the whole thing. If more anti-war types knew this story of ecological genocide would this still be as inclined to call the war illegitimate?
